Ask a herdster economist what business model has produced the greatest income in the U.S. lately and you will get buried with lofty answers. I will tell you that it is human herding, mostly by social media companies. Early on in the computer technology era entrepreneurs started noticing the profit potential of organising aggregations of people  and charging others for the privilege of placing an ad in front of them and enticing them to click the mouse.

The ease of reaching huge aggregations of people has made it possible to manage the opinions and choices people make. People are perfectly willing to be herded. That is part of the human condition but there is still a problem tech companies face. Even in a herding situation, people are not completely  helpless. Over time people develop a tolerance to suggestions given them and it gets hard to sell them things. Where the internet is concerned it gets increasingly hard to get folks to click the mouse.

Opportunities in human herding are kind of like the gold rush of 1849. There was gold in California. Countless resources were expended by thousands. all who thought they could get rich. Only a few did. There are no new herding opportunities. The internet advertising industry is over saturated with suppliers. Few people click and hardly a soul buys.

Because quantitative easing  has grossly mis-allocated the countries resources, there is an over supply of goods and services consumers are no longer interested in buying. The oil industry has already given way. Money will start coming out of social media firms and other human herding operations. When this starts happening it will be devastating to the general economy.

The business cycle is completely necessary for the efficient functioning of an economy. A life without suffering is not possible. Suffering is minimised in a free market system.  The notion that government should try and prevent recessions is nothing but folly.